With the advent of commercially available electrical power transmission, certain vehicles have been devised utilizing electricity provided by cables strung overhead along fixed routes. Such vehicles include trolley cars and locomotives and incorporate devices such as trolleys or pantographs engageable with an exposed trolley contact wire or conductor suspended from a catenary cable at a substantially constant height above the ground path or rails upon which the vehicles will travel. The surface of the electrified conductor is continuously exposed along its length for such engagement, and fastening the conductor for suspension from the catenary cable must provide clearance for the continuously exposed surface. Such conductors generally are solid wire extrusions of high strength, low resistance copper alloy having a generally cylindrical cross section profiled to define a pair of grooves on opposed sides of the top half of the conductor into which appropriately shaped clamping surfaces of conventional fasteners are received to achieve a griping relationship to the conductor. Such conventional fasteners also include a hook to which eyelets of hanger cables can be attached. Corresponding fasteners can be utilized to secure the hanger cables to the catenary cable overhead but which can be clamped entirely around the catenary cable. As the catenary cable assumes a catenary curved vertical shape upon being suspended between spaced supports, the hanger cables are of different lengths appropriate to maintain the conductor cable at a constant height when hung from the varying height of the vertically curved catenary cable.
One such conventional fastener comprises a pair of halves secured together above the cable conductor by a bolt and nut arrangement. A similar type fastener is used to secure the hanger cable to the catenary cable. The bolt and nut arrangements, however, gradually become loosened owing to the environmental exposure, dimensional changes owing to thermal expansion and other factors including the vibration transmitted to the line by the vehicles using the cable. Maintenance of the line requires that each bolt and nut arrangement be checked on a periodic basis to assure that the fastening device is securely fastened to the cable. Such fasteners furthermore require that the maintenance persons have an inventory containing a number of different parts such as for example nuts, bolts, lock-washers, in addition to the members forming the fastening devices themselves. It is desirable, therefore, to have a fastening device eliminates the use of bolt and nut arrangements. It is also desirable to have a fastening device that minimizes the number of parts.